Also, today, exactly one year ago, I had started writing Blood Demon's Retirement and posted it to RR on a whim. At first it was just meant as a way to kill time, since work was scarce during the pandemic. I started patreon the next month with the hopes of maybe earning a bit of extra spare change to help with my meager living at the time.
Flash forward to a year later. Now I'm writing the third novel of the series, all of which had seen modest success overall, and my patreon had grown to the point that I'm living entirely off the money I make from it. My own mental health and stress levels had gotten far better since I switched to writing full time, a change I had not even dared to dream about a year ago.
I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to all my readers. Thank you! None of these would have been possible without your support! I will keep writing more, so stay tuned for more stories to come!
"Why I had asked her to go with the Utghwes girl? My dear Leo, you clearly didn't keep tabs of news from down south.
That girl's nowhere as harmless as she might seem. She's as much a veteran as you or I. Hell, if I had to fight her one on one, I would have no confidence that I could handle her myself.
She seems affronted by this healer's guild mess anyway. Sending the letter and escorting that girl is a good excuse for her to see how things were at Posuin next door, so why not?" - Markgraf Eugenia Stahlfaust, Hammer of the East, to her consort.
Aideen left the last ten or so cowering bandits and raiders for Solenia and the knights to deal with, as she quickly took off and rushed towards where the Knight-Captain fought.
The situation there was more dire by a fair margin. More than half the knights were down, and the Knight-Captain's steed lay dying as well, as the woman herself fought side by side with the remaining three knights and one maid to hold the line with their lives.
Aideen went for the wounded first. She quickly stabilized two of the knights, and even the mare. Sadly, there was nothing she could have done for the other three or the maid. The ones still fighting were also injured to various degrees, yet gritted their teeth and fought on regardless.
She touched each of them briefly, for just a moment, enough to take care of their worst injuries for the time being and let them fight on. The maid at the end of the line failed to evade a bandit's blow before Aideen reached there, as she took a spear through her chest, but persevered and stabbed her opponent in the throat before she fell.
Aideen reached the woman a moment later, and quickly knelt down as she checked her condition with one hand. Her other hand wielded her weapon to keep the bandits at bay, with some difficulty due to her position.
With how serious the woman's injury was, Aideen had no time for subtlety, and forcefully pulled out the spear from her chest, which made the injury that much worse. Then her magic flowed through the woman, and seconds later the injury had closed up.
It was far from a perfect treatment, but it would suffice to keep the woman alive for the time being.
She herself stood up, and with her weapons grasped in both hands, went to work on the bandits. Her work this time was far less of healing, and far more of killing instead.
A machete swung for her face, and Aideen swayed backwards to avoid it, even as she used her right-hand stave's dagger-axe to disembowel a bandit. In the same movement, her left-hand stave rose from below and struck the bandit in front of her right between his legs violently.
She twirled around as the bandit crumpled, as the dagger-axe blade passed by and decapitated the man nonchalantly. At the same time the spearhead of the stave in her other hand flashed past the throat of another bandit, and left a long, red line, from which blood soon poured out even as the woman desperately clutched her throat.
As she made sure to keep a safe distance away - from the knights, so they don't accidentally end up a victim to her wildly flailing weapon -, Aideen carved her way through the bandit group. She could not identify any who looked like a leader sort, so she just went for the kill.
Some fortunate - or less fortunate, depending on the view point - bandits survived her rampage, mostly by being so badly crippled they could neither fight nor try to run. Those that tried to make a run for their horses, found either their necks severed from behind, or their heads shattered by a far-too-heavy metal stave.
When the carnage ended, Aideen walked back to the defensive circle, drenched from head to toe in blood and gore and other unmentionables. She ignored her state of dress and quickly went back to the injured behind the line the knights had held on to with their lives.
"Gather the wounded over," she commanded. None of the knights gainsaid her words, and despite how many of them were injured as well, they quickly set to work, as they moved to the other two entrances and with the help of the people there, carried the wounded over to where Aideen worked.
Aideen herself paid no heed to her surroundings, and her hands words swiftly as she removed blades or other things still within the wounds, then worked her magic until the injury was healed to the point that it looked like the victim was never injured.
Those with simple physical injuries, she handled the first, as she was well-versed in that, courtesy from her experience regenerating and healing her own body for countless times. Some were taken care of in mere moments, with even the girl whose innards were a mess healed within ten seconds.
What took her the longest was to heal the man with the head injury, as the strike had damaged part of his brain as well. The brain was the most finicky organ, and she had to take extreme care while she worked on it. Eventually, after ten minutes of careful tinkering, she lifted her hand with a satisfied sigh.
Then she went to heal the stubborn Knight-Captain, who despite her own relatively serious injuries had demanded that everyone else should get treated ahead of her. It was the sort of stubbornness Aideen liked, in a way, as it just showed how much she cared for her people.
No matter how good she was, though, Aideen was helpless when it came to those who already passed away by the time she reached them. Two of the older maids and three of the knights had perished before she could get to them. Many of those she had healed, had wounds bad enough their survival was questionable even if they had won the battle.
Of the bandits themselves, around twenty injured ones were rounded up and captured, with the rest dead. A few had escaped when they saw the tides turn against them, but most of the rest laid on the sands, which turned a crimson-brownish hue from their seeping blood.
Avitue
If you enjoy this story, please consider leaving a rating or review to help it gain more exposure, thank you! Or help support the author by leaving a tip!
Read ahead on my Patreon! For 5$ a month patrons will gain early access of up to 25 chapters ahead, or for 10$ a month, gain early access of up to 55 (10% bonus) chapters ahead!
Or you can subscribe to all my stories and get a 10% discount on the price!
Join the Discord for silly stuff and chat with us!
Also, today, exactly one year ago, I had started writing Blood Demon's Retirement and posted it to RR on a whim. At first it was just meant as a way to kill time, since work was scarce during the pandemic. I started patreon the next month with the hopes of maybe earning a bit of extra spare change to help with my meager living at the time.
Flash forward to a year later. Now I'm writing the third novel of the series, all of which had seen modest success overall, and my patreon had grown to the point that I'm living entirely off the money I make from it. My own mental health and stress levels had gotten far better since I switched to writing full time, a change I had not even dared to dream about a year ago.
I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to all my readers. Thank you! None of these would have been possible without your support! I will keep writing more, so stay tuned for more stories to come!
"Why I had asked her to go with the Utghwes girl? My dear Leo, you clearly didn't keep tabs of news from down south.
That girl's nowhere as harmless as she might seem. She's as much a veteran as you or I. Hell, if I had to fight her one on one, I would have no confidence that I could handle her myself.
She seems affronted by this healer's guild mess anyway. Sending the letter and escorting that girl is a good excuse for her to see how things were at Posuin next door, so why not?" - Markgraf Eugenia Stahlfaust, Hammer of the East, to her consort.
Aideen left the last ten or so cowering bandits and raiders for Solenia and the knights to deal with, as she quickly took off and rushed towards where the Knight-Captain fought.
The situation there was more dire by a fair margin. More than half the knights were down, and the Knight-Captain's steed lay dying as well, as the woman herself fought side by side with the remaining three knights and one maid to hold the line with their lives.
Aideen went for the wounded first. She quickly stabilized two of the knights, and even the mare. Sadly, there was nothing she could have done for the other three or the maid. The ones still fighting were also injured to various degrees, yet gritted their teeth and fought on regardless.
She touched each of them briefly, for just a moment, enough to take care of their worst injuries for the time being and let them fight on. The maid at the end of the line failed to evade a bandit's blow before Aideen reached there, as she took a spear through her chest, but persevered and stabbed her opponent in the throat before she fell.
Aideen reached the woman a moment later, and quickly knelt down as she checked her condition with one hand. Her other hand wielded her weapon to keep the bandits at bay, with some difficulty due to her position.
With how serious the woman's injury was, Aideen had no time for subtlety, and forcefully pulled out the spear from her chest, which made the injury that much worse. Then her magic flowed through the woman, and seconds later the injury had closed up.
It was far from a perfect treatment, but it would suffice to keep the woman alive for the time being.
She herself stood up, and with her weapons grasped in both hands, went to work on the bandits. Her work this time was far less of healing, and far more of killing instead.
A machete swung for her face, and Aideen swayed backwards to avoid it, even as she used her right-hand stave's dagger-axe to disembowel a bandit. In the same movement, her left-hand stave rose from below and struck the bandit in front of her right between his legs violently.
She twirled around as the bandit crumpled, as the dagger-axe blade passed by and decapitated the man nonchalantly. At the same time the spearhead of the stave in her other hand flashed past the throat of another bandit, and left a long, red line, from which blood soon poured out even as the woman desperately clutched her throat.
As she made sure to keep a safe distance away - from the knights, so they don't accidentally end up a victim to her wildly flailing weapon -, Aideen carved her way through the bandit group. She could not identify any who looked like a leader sort, so she just went for the kill.
Some fortunate - or less fortunate, depending on the view point - bandits survived her rampage, mostly by being so badly crippled they could neither fight nor try to run. Those that tried to make a run for their horses, found either their necks severed from behind, or their heads shattered by a far-too-heavy metal stave.
When the carnage ended, Aideen walked back to the defensive circle, drenched from head to toe in blood and gore and other unmentionables. She ignored her state of dress and quickly went back to the injured behind the line the knights had held on to with their lives.
"Gather the wounded over," she commanded. None of the knights gainsaid her words, and despite how many of them were injured as well, they quickly set to work, as they moved to the other two entrances and with the help of the people there, carried the wounded over to where Aideen worked.
Aideen herself paid no heed to her surroundings, and her hands words swiftly as she removed blades or other things still within the wounds, then worked her magic until the injury was healed to the point that it looked like the victim was never injured.
Those with simple physical injuries, she handled the first, as she was well-versed in that, courtesy from her experience regenerating and healing her own body for countless times. Some were taken care of in mere moments, with even the girl whose innards were a mess healed within ten seconds.
What took her the longest was to heal the man with the head injury, as the strike had damaged part of his brain as well. The brain was the most finicky organ, and she had to take extreme care while she worked on it. Eventually, after ten minutes of careful tinkering, she lifted her hand with a satisfied sigh.
Then she went to heal the stubborn Knight-Captain, who despite her own relatively serious injuries had demanded that everyone else should get treated ahead of her. It was the sort of stubbornness Aideen liked, in a way, as it just showed how much she cared for her people.
No matter how good she was, though, Aideen was helpless when it came to those who already passed away by the time she reached them. Two of the older maids and three of the knights had perished before she could get to them. Many of those she had healed, had wounds bad enough their survival was questionable even if they had won the battle.
Of the bandits themselves, around twenty injured ones were rounded up and captured, with the rest dead. A few had escaped when they saw the tides turn against them, but most of the rest laid on the sands, which turned a crimson-brownish hue from their seeping blood.
Avitue
If you enjoy this story, please consider leaving a rating or review to help it gain more exposure, thank you! Or help support the author by leaving a tip!
Read ahead on my Patreon! For 5$ a month patrons will gain early access of up to 25 chapters ahead, or for 10$ a month, gain early access of up to 55 (10% bonus) chapters ahead!
Or you can subscribe to all my stories and get a 10% discount on the price!
Join the Discord for silly stuff and chat with us!
